Chapter Seven
Good morning, sunshine

Aran remained unconscious for several minutes. He was still suffering from the effects of some internal bleeding, and his blood pressure was still sometimes low. The sudden movement of his head, when he involuntarily jerked it up at hearing Elise’s loud, frantic, and totally unexpected reply to his call for help, had caused, essentially, a temporary vascular insufficiency to his brain, causing him to pass out. He was also still under the more insidious and serious effects of brain damage due to axonal shearing. Mild, comparatively, but he was still effectively scrambled into next week.

He came to slowly, and was terribly confused when he finally woke up enough to realize some one was shouting at him on the communications channel. Confused, and annoyed. Damn, he felt like shit. Damn, his head hurt. If this was a hangover, he must’ve ended the drinking binge by breaking all the bottles and shoving them through his eyes and out the back of his head.

“Martelle, come in Martelle, can you read me?!?”

He blinked sleepily, irritated. The first thing he had to do was find the damned volume control. He found it and thumbed it down, and Elise’s voice faded to a dim whisper. He glanced around, not remembering why he was at communications. Where was Wu? For that matter, where was anyone? His eyes swept slowly and blearily across the bridge, and came to rest on the ruined chair that had once held Shaw.

Memory returned, in a chaotic rush, like a poorly recalled nightmare. He closed his eyes, uselessly wishing he hadn’t remembered. He preferred ignorant confusion.

One good thing had apparently happened, though: he had finally contacted Calla Station. He gently thumbed the volume back up, just a hair. “This is Martelle, come in Calla, and not so fucking loud if you please,” he rasped. His voice was hoarse, and his throat hurt.

“Oh my god, Martelle, are you okay?! Do you have casualities? Status, please, Martelle!”

Aran couldn’t figure out how long he had been passed out. Minutes? Hours? He’d better check on Cap and Tommy before he yammered with this lady at Calla. “Negative Calla on us being okay, we’re pretty well fucked,” he muttered. “Yes on casualties. Status pending, hang on Calla.” He thumbed the volume back down before she could start to holler any more questions at him. Crazy lady; calm your ass already.

He pushed himself into the pod. Thompson and Cap looked the same. Judging from how little their fluids had gone down, he hadn’t been out very long. Cap had pissed and shit himself again, and Aran spent a few minutes cleaning him up. Chrissakes, Cap, where does it all come from? Your constant pissing I can understand, I’m trying to keep you topped off, but you haven’t eaten in a couple days. “I always knew you were full of shit,” he whispered, but it wasn’t true, and it wasn’t funny.

Thompson’s catheter had kinked, and Aran spent a few minutes fussing with it, getting it going again. He held Thompson’s hand firmly in his left, and began to peel some of the tape away so he could readjust the catheter.

Thompson pulled his hand away.

He didn’t pull it far; Aran had a good grip on it, although he almost let go, he was so startled. Aran looked up into Thompson’s face. His eyelids fluttered.

Mindful that he’d better get the catheter taken care of before he did anything else, Aran fixed it quickly, glancing up at Thompson’s face the whole while. The last thing Aran wanted to do was to have to get a new catheter in a new vein on one of these guys; it had been bitch-hard enough the first time. After he had taped it back into place, he shook Thompson’s shoulder. “Thompson. Hey, Tommy,” he said, quietly. “Tommy, wake up.”

His eyes fluttered again, then opened, but they didn’t seem to focus. He made a low moaning sound, then muttered something Aran couldn’t understand.

“Tommy? Hey, it’s me, Aran. You coming around? Come on, Tommy, wake up.” He patted his face. Thompson moved his head a little, and moaned again. His eyes flickered. Aran tried everything he could, but that was about all he could get out of Thompson. He’d open his eyes, but not seem to see anything. He’d make noises, but made no sense, mostly just moans. He moved his head a little, and started to move his arms and legs, small paddling motions. Aran made sure he was secured in the bedslot, and after a half hour of this, he gave up. Maybe Tommy was coming around, but he was taking his damned sweet time about it. In a way, this paddling, open-eyed, unseeing, moaning Thompson was scarier than the totally unconscious Thompson had been. Before, he’d just seemed like he was asleep. Now, he looked like someone who was pretty well fucked up in his head. And if Tommy looked like this, but was waking up, how much worse off was Cap? Instead of making him feel hopeful, Thompson’s improvement did nothing but make Aran feel sick with worry and dread.

Crap, forgot all about Calla. Aran pulled himself back out to the bridge. There was a faint clamoring on the comm; sounded like a couple people were yelling at him now. His thumb hovered over the volume. He hesitated, not wanting to talk to people, even though he was relieved to have reached the folks at Calla. He didn’t want to explain what had happened. He didn’t want to tell them the bad news.

He shrugged and inched the volume up – he was guessing that maybe what had happened wasn’t news to the folks at Calla after all. In fact, they might have a better idea of what happened than he did.

He interupted the pleas for the Martelle to respond, without bothering to listen. “Calla Station, this is the Martelle.” The voices stopped immediately. “Calla, do you read?”

“We read you, Martelle,” said the man’s voice. “Status?”

Aran smiled grimly. This guy was all business. No hysterics out of this guy. He didn’t realize that Valo had been screaming into the channel, trying to raise a response after everything had gone frighteningly silent. “Status…” murmured Aran. He tried to collect himself. If this guy can be all business, cold and calm, so could he. “Calla, we’ve had a collision. We’ve had no contact with the stern half of the ship since then. We had five crew in the bridge, of those, two dead, two seriously wounded, and me.” Lightly wounded. Shaken, not stirred. He suppressed a hysterical giggle. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. Holy crap, get a hold of yourself.

There was a moment’s silence. Then the woman came on again. “Who’s dead?” she asked in a shakey voice.

Hey, thanks for asking how I’m doing. “Peter Shaw, and Wu Xiao both died in the impact. Captain Bennet and Woodard Thompson are injured, unconscious. Captain’s probably critical, Tommy’s maybe coming around a little.” He paused. “I’m functional, but not in the best of shape.” There was a sob, and then that channel cut out.

The man spoke again. He sounded like most of the all-business had slipped out of him; he sounded tired and sad. “Martelle, this is Valo Rydell of Calla Station. My wife Elise has been on the other channel trying to establish communications with you. Who are we speaking with?”

Who am I again? Oh yeah… “This is Aran Kwahyentah.” He’d been so wrapped up in trying to take care of Cap and Tommy, so focused on his next task, whatever it was, that he felt he had almost lost himself in the efforts. He hadn’t really had much of a chance to think of himself.

“Uh… Aran… what was that? Missed your name.”

“Just call me Aran. We need help, Calla, can you come?”

Valo then said the sweetest words Aran could’ve imagined. “Aran, we’re already on the way.” Aran even felt a momentary faintness as the flood of relief swept through him.

“Thank god,” he whispered. Louder, he said, “ETA, Calla?”

“We just set out. Two to three days. Can you hang in there until then?”

Aran thought. “I can,” he finally said. “Thompson might be able to. I don’t know if Captain Bennett will make it though.”

“What’s his status?”

“Pretty poor. Maybe a broken neck. He’s been unconscious since the impact.” Valo asked a few more questions, and Aran answered. It became apparent that Valo didn’t have much more medical knowledge than Aran; at any rate he didn’t have any more suggestions for what could be done for him. Valo asked about Thompson too, and Aran told him what he could, then got up to check on him. He was unchanged. He reported this back to Valo.

“At least it sounds like he’s improving; that’s promising. What’s your status, Aran?”

Aran didn’t answer, trying to think of how to reply.

“Aran?”

“I’m functional.”

“Elaborate.”

Aran smiled again. He was starting to like this Valo. A man of few words. Straight to the point. “I was unconscious for an unknown period after impact, maybe hours. Still prone to passing out, which is what happened when your wife responded to my distress signal. Maybe some internal bleeding, controlled. No wounds, I didn’t impact, but got scrambled pretty good anyway. Stable, I think.”

“Good. Mental status? You going to make it, Aran?”

Aran stared at the comm panel. Okay, now he didn’t like Valo as much. There’s such a thing as straight TO the point, and straight fucking past the point. He had no idea how to respond.

“I’m fine.” He frowned, closing his eyes. He had rarely in his life made such a bald-faced lie.

Valo didn’t reply.

“Or… not. I’ll be all right.”

“Hey… Aran,” said Valo, and his voice was gentle and patient. “We’ve got a couple days before we get there. I just want to make sure you’re hanging in there. It’s a long boring trip, and if you need to talk about what’s happened, we’d be glad to listen.”

“Who’s ‘we’? Sounded like your wife turned off her channel; she sure as hell isn’t listening.”

“No, no, she is, I’m sure. But she turned off transmission after you gave us the bad news. She was very good friends with Wu. But she’s still back at Calla Station; we can’t both leave it. ‘We’ means our son Tursten and myself. Tursten will be manning the comm for at least part of our trip out to pick you up.”

“Oh. Okay.” Aran tried to remember what Cap had said about the Rydell boy. He was sixteen, he seemed to recall. He had been on the comm for a minute, that was right. He had sounded young. With a smile Aran recalled that the boy had managed to fool his parents and stay on the channel, but then it occurred to him that meant he had probably heard the collision, and his smile faded.

Valo seemed to think Aran’s short answer was a disapproving one. “Tursten is old enough for emergency missions, and he’s been trained on this ship. He’s plenty capable of manning the comm.”

“Oh – I’m sure he is. How old is he, sixteen? I was out on my own when I was sixteen; I know what a sixteen year old can do if they want to badly enough.”

“Yes, he’s sixteen. And he’s right here; he’s been listening in.”

“Hey Tursten. Thanks for coming out to rescue us.”

There was a fumble of sound and the boy’s voice came over. “Not a problem Mr. K. We’re just glad to hear your voice.”

“Heh. Call me Aran.”

“Yes sir.”

Aran smiled faintly. He was by no means ‘sir’ material.

A pause, and another fumble of sound, and then Valo spoke again. “I’ll ask again, Aran, because I need to know. Are you okay? Mentally? You going to be able to hold it together all right?”

Irritated, Aran answered sharply. “No, can’t really say that I am, I’ve had a couple of epicly Bad Fucking Days. Am I going to hold it together until you get here? Until we get back to Calla Station? Am I going to keep going well enough to take care of Cap and Tommy, until you get here? Yeah, sure I am. Calm your ass; I’ll be able to at the very fucking least hold it fucking together.” He closed his eyes and sighed. None of that was what he had meant to say. But Val had made him angry – no, let’s be honest now, Val had frightened him, because Aran really was afraid he was going to lose his grip, and having that bluntly pointed out to him scared him, and being frightened pissed him off. He tried to regroup, and continued in a somewhat calmer voice. “I’ll be fine. Right now I’m pretty tired though; I’ve been trying to get our communications up for just about forever, it seems. I think I’m going to check on Cap and Tommy and then get some sleep.” Cause I’ve been, you know, holding it together. “Hey… look, sorry. I’m just…”

“It’s okay, Aran,” said Valo. “It’s okay. Get some rest.”

“Yeah. All right. Give me a few hours.”

“Take all the time you need, Aran. We’ll be here in channel when you wake up. One of us will be, Elise or Tursten or I. Okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.” Aran hesitated, knowing his simple ‘thanks’ didn’t convey how grateful he was they were coming, but he didn’t know what else to say. “…Martelle out.”

Aran made his way back in to the pod. Thompson was still about the same. Captain Bennett’s breathing sounded worse, even more ragged than before. Pneumonia, maybe? He didn’t seem feverish. Maybe bleeding into his lungs. Maybe… ah, who knew. Aran gave him a shot of antibiotics, just in case Cap was starting to come down with pneumonia. He wished Cap would wake up. It sounded like what he needed was a good cough to bring some of that crap up.

Aran folded himself into the slot farthest from the others. They stank. He didn’t smell so pretty himself, but not as bad as Cap and Tommy. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Two days, maybe three days. He could hold on for a couple more days. Sure. No problem.

At least, it wasn’t a problem until the nightmares started.


Chapter Eight

“You think he’s going to be okay, Dad?” asked Tursten.

Val shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know him, I don’t know anything about him. No way of telling whether he’ll be okay or not. Sounds like he’s stable, at least. Physically, anyway.”

“What about Captain Bennett? And the other guy?”

Valo shook his head. “Didn’t sound good. Again, I don’t know. We’re just going on what Aran says, right now.”

Tursten nodded. “What are we going to be able to do for them? Anything?”

“I can only say ‘I don’t know’ so many times,” said Val, smiling. “Maybe we can; it’ll depend what kind of injuries they have. We’ve got far better medical equipment than Aran does, I’m sure, but I don’t know if it will do us any good.”

“Damn. I wish we could get there faster.”

“We’re going about as fast as we can. We’ve still got to be careful; there’s still a lot of debris kicking around out here. I’ve got us set up to go on a different route than we would’ve sent the Martelle on normally, but we should still get there fairly quickly.”

Tursten nodded again. “I know. I was just wishing.” He paused for a moment, then asked again, “You think he’s going to be okay?”

Val looked at Tursten, and silently studied his face. He sighed. “Honestly? No. No, I don’t think he’s going to be okay for a while. He’s been through a little bit of hell. He sounds kind of touchy. I just hope he can keep himself together until we get back home.” He shook his head. “He sounds young. He was probably one of the rookies Captain Bennett was talking about.” He studied Tursten’s face again, and didn’t like the worry he saw there. “He’ll be okay. He’s got us coming to get him; he’ll be a lot better off once we get there.”

Tursten blinked. “You just told me he won’t be okay, then you told me he would.”

Val smiled faintly. “See? Told you I don’t know. Depends on what you mean by ‘okay’, I guess.”



Aran was not okay. His sleep was interrupted by a relentless series of vivid nightmares. He went into the bridge and saw the bodies, then Shaw got up, crushed head dangling and oozing clouds of blood, and the bastard was still trying to talk to him. He checked on Cap and Tommy for the umpteenth time, and Cap was gone. He sat in the bridge, uselessly trying to fix the communications panel, knowing that the conversation he had with the people from Calla was all some kind of malfunction; it had never really happened. He cowered in the life pod as Wu and Shaw beat on the door of the other pod, screaming to be let out. He finally jimmied the door to the stern open, and it opened onto the auditorium at the tribal center in his hometown, strewn with bodies and wreckage. He checked on Cap and Tommy again, and they were both dead, long dead, they had always been dead. He pulled the catheter out of the back of his hand, and all the bones in his hand and wrist came with it, in a long line, like a blood-smeared ivory rosary.

He found the bodies in the bridge again, and they were all dead, but Thompson sat up slowly and looked at him, and began to talk.

“Aran. Hey – Aran. Wake up.”

Aran opened his eyes. For once he hadn’t jerked his head and flared up his headache again, though it was still there, simmering. He blinked blearily and rubbed his face.

“Hey, there you are. Mornin’, sunshine.”

Aran looked over at Thompson. He was awake, but looked terrible. His eyes were sunken, with dark circles underneath. His skin was still bruised on the sides of his face, from where his head had been held by his chair. But he was awake, and his eyes were clear, and looking back at him. “Hey…. Hey, Tommy, welcome back.” Aran extracted himself from his slot and pushed himself over to Thompson. “How you doing, Tommy?”

“You tell me. What the hell happened? Last thing I remember was giving you grief during your shift with Shaw.”

Aran considered Thompson as he quickly did all the little medical checks that by then had become routine. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit. What happened?”

“Something collided with the ship. We were all up in the bridge, you and me, and Cap,” Aran nodded towards the captain, “and Shaw and Wu. Can’t get to the back of the ship; I’ve got no clue how everyone else is.”

Thompson stared at Captain Bennett. “Is he out too? How is he?”

“Not good. He’s been unconscious the whole time. He might have broken his neck.”

“Holy crap. Where’s Shaw and Wu, then?”

Aran didn’t answer, and frowned as he turned and fussed with the captain’s catheter. Out of the blue, when Tommy asked how Shaw and Wu were, he felt a sweeping surge of grief. He felt like crying, all of a sudden, when he’d felt nothing of the sort before. He didn’t speak, trying to get himself under control before he did.

“Aran, where’s Shaw and Wu?”

“Dead,” he whispered.

“Ah, shit,” breathed Thompson. “Shit.”

After a few moments Aran felt he could talk without losing it. “The folks from Calla Station are on their way; they’ll be here in a couple days.”

Thompson nodded, still seeming stunned by Aran’s news. “Ah… well, that’s good.” He didn’t sound terribly excited about it.

“How are you feeling, Tommy? Specifically?”

“Like shit, told you that already. I specifically feel like shit. I feel like I’ve got all the hangovers I’ve ever had in my life, all at once, and I feel like I got the shit kicked out of me while I was drunk.” He paused, thinking. “And I feel like I haven’t eaten for a week.”

“Well, a couple days or so.”

“Holy shit, have I been out that long?”

Aran nodded. “Was kind of worried you weren’t going to come out of it.”

“Ah… well, here I am, in all my wondrous glory. Damn, is that me that stinks?”

Aran nodded again, smiling. “You both reek. We can get you cleaned up a little better now that you’re awake. Can you move around? We lost false gravity, so it shouldn’t take too much to get around.”

Thompson moved his arms and legs, gingerly. He grimaced. “Ow. Yeah, I can probably get around a bit, but I’d rather not.”

“Okay. Well, let me talk to the Calla people and let them know what’s going on. I only got a hold of them a little while ago, before I went to sleep.”

Thompson nodded, carefully flexing his arms and legs. Aran noticed he wasn’t doing much of anything with his left arm and leg. He watched until Thompson looked up and saw him. Thompson waved him on. “Go on. I’m okay for now.”

Val was the one that responded when Aran put out the call. “Hey, Aran. How are you doing?”

“Good. Thompson woke up, he’s looking a lot better than I expected.”

“Great! That’s great news. How’s Captain Bennett?”

“Same. No real change.”

“And how are you doing?”

A flash from one of his nightmares came back to him, where he pulled the bones out of his own hand. Aran swallowed. “I’m fine,” he said.

Val was silent for just long enough that Aran knew Val didn’t believe him for a second. “Right.”

“How’s your ETA, Valo?”

“Mmm… about forty-five, maybe fifty hours.”

“That doesn’t sound right. I thought you said you were 2-3 days out last time?”

“Yup. Forty-eight to seventy-two hours is now forty-five to fifty. We have to go a bit slow, Aran, we’ve still got a lot of debris loose. And we want to make sure we head in the right direction; we’re still having trouble finding your signal.”

“Is our emergency beacon coming through to you?”

“It’s very intermittent, sporadic. Sometimes we can get it, sometimes not.”

“Yeah, okay. I tried to make sure we’d sent out the call for help, but I couldn’t tell if anyone would be able to get it, I couldn’t tell if I was sending it out. I still can’t tell if I’m sending the signal or not.”

Valo paused. “We can hear it, Aran.” For some reason Aran thought he heard a smile in Valo’s voice.

“All right. I just wanted to let you know Thompson was awake. I’m going to see what I can do for him; I’ll contact you later, okay?”

“Sure thing, Aran. We’ll be here when you’re ready.”

Aran went back to the life pod to find Thompson asleep again. “Thompson? Hey, Tommy, wake up.” It took a while to rouse him, but Aran finally got Thompson around again.

“Damn, Aran,” he grumbled. “Why’d you have to wake me up? I was having a nice lie-in.”

“I think you’ve had enough sleep, you slacker. Come on, show me how you’re doing.” Aran forced a reluctant Thompson to move, and finally Thompson had to admit that things weren’t working quite right. His arms and legs weren’t doing exactly what he wanted them to, and the left side was much worse.

Any movement at all helped, though, and although they both found it embarrassing, and Thompson complained and protested, muttering about ‘invasion of privacy’ and ‘watch your hand, mister’, together they managed to get him cleaned up a bit more than Aran had been able to do alone. Aran found it a bit funny that he hadn’t been at all embarassed, keeping Thompson clean while he was unconscious, it was just something that had to be done, but now that he was awake, Aran was mortified. Thompson kept up his jokes, but Aran could tell he was embarrassed too. Embarrassed and humiliated. Aran tried to keep it all business, and Thompson joked it all away, and together they got it done.

Next thing was to get some food in him. Aran rummaged through the supplies and got Thompson some food; he had Aran help him into the bridge to eat. The food was all emergency supplies, not terribly inspiring, but Thompson wolfed it down.

“Don’t overdo it,” Aran said, watching him plow through his third packaged meal.

“Fuck that. I’m starving.”

“Just don’t barf in here.”

Thompson looked up suddenly, his eyes wide, cheeks puffed out. He made some gagging sounds, then laughed at the look on Aran’s face. ‘Gotcha.”

Aran grinned, his first real smile since before the collision. “Bastard.”

As Thompson ate, Aran told him what he knew of what had happened. Thompson listened seriously, and made only a few comments. Aran told Thompson what he had been doing for Bennett, and although he had hoped that Tommy would maybe have some other ideas what they could do for him, he just shook his head. “Shit, Aran, I’ve got no clue. Sounds like you’ve done everything you can for him. He sure looks like hell. Let’s take another look at him once I’m done here.”

After pulling himself carefully into the pod, insisting he try it on his own without Aran’s help, Thompson took a good long look at Captain Bennett. He even bent close to his chest and listened closely to his raspy breathing. He felt around the captain’s neck, pinched his fingers, opened his eyelids to peek in. Finally he grimaced and shook his head. “Cap’s fucked,” he said bluntly.

That was not what Aran had wanted to hear. “Well… isn’t there anything we can do for him? What’s wrong with him?”

“Like I said, you’ve done what you can. We’ll keep it up. And there’s all kinds of things wrong with him. I think you’re right; he’s maybe got a broken neck, but I can’t tell how bad. His breathing sounds like he’s sucking mud through a straw.” He shrugged, then winced and looked at his shoulder. “Ow. Everytime I move something else hurts. I don’t know, Aran, maybe when the people from Calla get here they might be able to do something else. They should have better equipment, right?”

“I guess. If not on the ship they’re coming in, then back on the station maybe.”

“If he lasts that long.”

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